Angela Carter

193 Pages·1998·18.519 MB·English

by  Linden Peach (auth.)

MACMILLAN MODERN NOVELISTS
General Editor: Norman Page
MACMILLAN MODERN NOVELISTS
Published titles
MARGARET ATWOOD Coral Ann Howells
SAUL BELLOW Peter Hyland
ALBERT CAMUS Philip Thody
ANGELA CARTER Linden Peach
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY Peter Conradi
GEORGE ELIOT Alan W. Bellringer
WILLIAM FAULKNER David Dowling
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT David Roe
E. M. FüRSTER Norman Page
ANDRE GIDE David Walker
WILLIAM GOLDING James Gindin
GRAHAM GREENE Neil McEwan
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Peter Messent
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD Stephen Wade
HENRY JAMES Alan W. Bellringer
JAMES JOYCE Richard Brown
PRANZ KAFKA Ronald Spiers and Beatrice Sandberg
D. H. LAWRENCE G. M. Hyde
ROSAMOND LEHMANN Judy Simons
DORIS LESSING Ruth Whittaker
MALCOLM LOWRY Tony Bareharn
NORMAN MAILER Michael K. Glenday
THOMAS MANN Martin Travers
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ Michael Bell
TONI MORRISON Linden Peach
IRIS MURDOCH Hilda D. Spear
VLADIMIR NABOKOV David Rampton
V. S. NAIPAUL Bruce King
GEORGE ORWELL Valerle Myers
ANTHONY POWELL Neil McEwan
MARCEL PROUST Philip Thody
BARSARA PYM Michael Cotsell
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE Philip Thody
MURIEL SPARK Norman Page
MARK TWAIN Peter Messent
JOHN UPDIKE Judie Newman
EVELYN WAUGH Jacqueline McDonnell
H. G. WELLS Michael Draper
PATRICK WHITE Mark Williams
VIRGINIA WOOLF Edward Bishop
SIX WOMEN NOVELISTS Merryn Williams
Forthcoming titles
SIMONE OE BEAUVOIR Terry Keefe
IVY COMPTON-BURNETT Janet Godden
JOSEPH CONRAD Owen Knowles
JOHN FOWLES James Acheson
SALMAN RUSHDIE D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke
ALICE WALKER Maria Lauret
MACMILLAN MODERN NOVELISTS
ANGELA CARTER
Linden Peach
©Linden Peach 1998
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the author of this work in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 1998 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-67616-5 ISBN 978-1-349-25943-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25943-4
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For Angela
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
General Editors Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Euro-American Gothic and the 1960s: Shadow Dance
(1966), Several Perceptions (1968) and Love (1970) 26
3 Pain and Exclusion: The Magie Toyshop (1967) and Heroes
and Villains (1969) 71
4 The Last Days: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor
Hoffman (1972) and The Passion of New Eve (1977) 99
5 Illegitimate Power, Carnival and Theatre: Nights at the
Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991) 131
6 Postscript 159
Select Bibliography 171
Index 178
vii
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the Estate of Angela
Carter, c/ o Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd, 20 Powis Mews,
London Wll 1JN, for permission to use copyright material from
Shadow Dance, © Angela Carter 1966; The Magie Toyshop, © Angela
Carter 1967; Several Perceptions, © Angela Carter 1968; Heroes
and Villains, © Angela Carter 1969; Love, © Angela Carter 1971;
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, © Angela Carter
1972; The Passion of New Eve, © Angela Carter 1977; Nights at the
Circus, © Angela Carter 1984; and Wise Children, © Angela Carter
1991.
viii
General Editor's Preface
The death of the novel has often been announced, and part of the
secret of its obstinate vitality must be its capacity for growth,
adaptation, self-renewal and self-transformation: like some vigorous
organism in a speeded up Darwinian ecosystem, it adapts itself
quickly to a changing world. War and revolution, economic crisis
and social change, radically new ideologies such as Marxism and
Freudianism, have made this century unprecedented in human
history in the speed and extent of change, but the novel has shown
an extraordinary capacity to find new forms and techniques and to
accommodate new ideas and conceptions of human nature and
human experience, and even to take up new positions on the nature
of fiction itself.
In the generations immediately preceding and following 1914, the
novel underwent a radical redefinition of its nature and possibilities.
The present series of monographs is devoted to the novelists who
created the modern novel and to those who, in their turn, either
continued and extended, or reacted against and rejected, the
traditions established during that period of intense exploration and
experiment. It includes a nurober of those who lived and wrote in
the nineteenth century but whose innovative contribution to the art
of fiction makes it impossible to ignore them in any account of the
modern novel; it also includes the so-called 'modernists' and those
who in the mid- and late twentieth century have emerged as
outstanding practitioners of this genre. The scope is, inevitably,
international; not only, in the migratory and exile-haunted world of
our century, do writers refuse to heed national boundaries -
'English' Iiterature lays claim to Conrad the Pole, Henry James the
American, and Joyce the Irishman- but geniuses such as Flaubert,
ix
General Editor's Preface
X
Dostoevsky and Kafka have had an influence on the fiction of many
nations.
Each volume in the series is intended to provide an introduction
to the fiction of the writer concemed, both for those approaching
him or her for the first time and for those who are already familiar
with some parts of the achievement in question and now wish to
place it in the context of the total oeuvre. Although essential
information relating to the writer's life and times is given, usually
in an opening chapter, the approach is primarily critical and the
emphasis is not upon 'background' or generalisations but upon
close examination of important texts. Where an author is notably
prolific, major texts have been made to convey, more summarily, a
sense of the nature and quality of the author's work as a whole.
Those who want to read further will find suggestions in the select
bibliography included in each volume. Many novelists are, of
course, not only novelists but also poets, essayists, biographers,
dramatists, travel writers and so forth; many have practised shorter
forms of fiction; and many have written letters or kept diaries that
constitute a significant part of their literary output. A brief study
cannot hope to deal with all of these in detail, but where the shorter
fiction and non-fictional writings, private and public, have an
important relationship to the novels, some space has been devoted
to them.
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